Digital Public Library of America, the Cliffs Notes

The Digital Public Library of America, a Harvard-led initiative to create a national digital library “that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all,” is an awesome idea whose implementation is difficult to understand. Here, from MIT’s Technology Review, is a chart to help.

The chart accompanies an article by Nicholas Carr, “The Library of Utopia,” in the May/June 2012 issue of the Technology Review.

Carr acknowledges that it is okay to be sort of, or extremely, confused by the DPLA. “The controversy over nomenclature points to a deeper problem confronting the nascent online library: its inability to define itself. The DPLA remains a mystery in many ways. No one knows precisely how it will operate or even what it will be.” OK, glad I’m not the only one.